Top 30 Etta James Quotes

You can’t fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

It feels so good to be happy.

I’m not starry eyed, and I’m not money crazy.

When I’m performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I’m that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn’t wait to be smokin’ a cigarette, you know?

Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

I was originally like a punker, know what I mean, like the punks are today, I’d spit in a minute.

Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about. I don’t.

Johnny Guitar… just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the ’50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together. I would hear him sing every night.

Once you lose the weight, you’re really anxious to eat healthy.

Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about.

I’m not a bourgeois person, never will be.

My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.

What happens is, when I perform, I’m somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.

I sing the songs that people need to hear.

It’s not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it’s about paying tribute to them.

It’s the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, ‘Oh, baby,’ if there’s a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.

I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean, and I had a place to stay.

They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I’m still vulgar. I’m vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I’ve got to do something.

People always say ‘Etta, you know what your problem is? You’re neither fish nor fowl. There is no place to rack you.’ When I would go in a record shop, you might find one or two records by me in different stacks.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

A few years ago, I thought, I’ll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.

See, I don’t like places where people can’t dance – don’t like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.

When I look out at the people and they look at me and they’re smiling, then I know that I’m loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.

I was a sloppy kid, wanted to be just wild.

The only time that I am really truly happy – when I feel at my best – is when I’m on the stage.

This is an album of songs that I’ve always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I figured I could do ‘It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World’, because I believe it’s the truth.